The Drama of Being a Social Worker: Counter Transference in The Post Separation Landscape

I have long been interested in cases where social workers have failed to recognise that the child who is alienated is being abused by the parent to whom they are aligned. In such cases, even where there is a clear judgement of emotional harm and the case has passed into public law, social workers have been seen to resist the notion that a child should be removed from the alienating parent and have continued to see the problem as a ‘he said/she said’ situation. In repeated cases over the past five years I have found myself to be at odds with social workers who, in public law cases, hold what I consider to be disproportionate amounts of power in that they are able to determine the use of resources in a case, whether a child is removed into foster care for example, and how a child should be helped and who by. In this situation, where it is clear that the understanding of alienation by a social worker is severely limited AND they are being manipulated by unwell parents, the lack of social worker self awareness becomes starkly apparent.